As a space bear, human or any other race, venture forth into the galaxy, create custom ships, conquer new worlds, build new colonies and defend your very existence against those who would take what is yours.

Packages that include this game

Buy Iceberg Interactive - Cool as Ice Bundle

Recommended By Curators

"I have a hard time recommending this one because it still feels unfinished. It's got some good points though, but it's lacking otherwise."

Reviews

“When you finally uncover the secrets to ancient alien technology or build a frigate that wins a deep space battle, StarDrive provides a sense of accomplishment few games can.”
73 – GameInformer

“Some omissions and flaws, but balanced by excellent alien races and ship design. A welcome addition to the crew.”
78 – PC Gamer

“I love that StarDrive’s master lists of ships and planets can be sorted by any column, making it easy to find the largest nearby planet or ships in your fleet that are costing you the most in maintenance.”
70 – Machinima

About This Game

StarDrive sets a new benchmark for the ‘4X Space Strategy’ genre. Starting with a single planet and a small number of space-worthy vessels, you must venture forth into the galaxy, conquer new worlds, build new colonies and defend your very existence against those who would take what is yours. How you play is your decision. Use diplomacy or brute force. Trade, spy and research your way to galactic domination. Make friends, or create mortal enemies…

The heart of StarDrive is its ship design and combat engine.

StarDrive takes a modular approach to ship design, allowing the player to create custom ships where the composition and placement of ship modules really matters to the performance of a ship.. In combat, if your portside armour is taking a beating, then rotate around and show them the starboard side! Hide behind a friendly capital ship’s shields; warp into and out of the fray, launch fighters, lay mines, and so much more.

Key Features

Real time gameplay with a seamless zoom from a grand strategic view to a close-up action view

Choose from 8 beautifully rendered alien races or design your own to lead into the stars; interact, negotiate and forge allegiances on your way to victory

Expand your empire and colonize all kinds of planets, terraform and populate them and build them into specialized centers of trade or industry

Research and unlock an array of technologies to improve your military and industrial capabilities

Control your ships with classic real time strategy commands or jump into the fray by taking direct ‘arcade’ control of any ship in your empire

Create your unique ship designs with the modular ship design system and determine your own fate in battle

Create custom fleet formations and set rules of engagement in the easy-to-use fleet editor

The game has a good concept, the ship designer is fantastic. However, the game is NOT FINISHED. The author abandoned it to work on a sequel instead of finishing what he started.

The game is missing:

Any meaningful construction on planets.

Detailed Tech Trees.

Balanced 4x elements (it's very easy to break balance on spies in particular, and impossible to do well on high difficulties without large spy bonuses really).

Proper debugging.

Multiplayer.

Although if this game had been finished it could have been very good, it has not been, and I would NEVER buy another product from the same author. If you're interested in this game, I would consider pirating it, getting a copy from a friend, or some other method that avoids paying the author. The ship designer is still fun to play with as long as you install one of the large mods that adds in a lot of the content that the game is missing.

So after a long while this Dev releases, of what should have been StarDrive in the first place, StarDrive 2. If you purchased StarDrive before the 'release/abandoning' you will certainly feel screwed over, below is written as to why.

He has abandoned and called the first StarDrive 'finished' himself (despite all the criticism, which he immediately removes stating 'I got a little carried away trying to clean the forums up.') only so he can release the game a second(!) time in a more finished state. (http://store.steampowered.com/app/252450)The game that StarDrive should have been in the first place.

The developer has gone as far as to excluding all criticism only to be put in 'one single topic' giving us the reason of 'I think it is a better approach to provide a single thread for people to vent in rather than to just delete repetitive threads.'(here's the topic, http://steamcommunity.com/app/220660/discussions/0/792923683730544619/ )That's right, one topic to ignore. The rest will simply be removed. Just one topic he has to avoid, makes things simple for him doesn't it.

Any form of (constructive) criticism is replied with 'If you feel cheated by StarDrive, kindly scroll up to the upper right portion of your browser screen and click the "Logout" button. I don't want to hear it.' and/or removed.

This is why steam early access is a dangerous thing, you can't get your money back when the developer(s) fail to forfill their promises that they advertised the product with in the first place.

Stay away from this Dev and publisher, atleast that is my opinion and what I recommend.

The game is awesome, and it is a lot of fun to play. I have played it numerous times, attacked the game in different angles each time, being different races, building my ships differently each time. But the thing is there have been no updates, no work shop allowance to make it more customizable, not even DLC, not even a shred of a furthering of the game to make it a step above the other games that are of the same ilk.

I hate that I am marking it as a negative review, but my love for this game wore out with the fact that it has been the same game wit nothing added to it since I bought it. With this game type there need to be some kind of additions or updates to make it worthwhile to play. Throw me a curve ball, give me something to make me want to play it more, but it hasn't happened.

Buy it if you want, but in the long run, it doesnt hold my attention anymore.